An image sensor is a tool that obtains information about the contents of an image. An ordinary camera is one type of image sensor. A visual sensor may extract relevant information from an image obtained by the image sensor.
It may be desirable to incorporate visual data processing into an image sensor. This may be used to reduce the cost of image transmission, and also to minimize the amount of data received by devices which are remote from the image sensor, e.g., chip devices. However, adding local processing into the pixels may reduce the xe2x80x98efficiencyxe2x80x99 of use of the semiconductor real estate, i.e., it may reduce the total number of pixels that may be integrated on a given area of semiconductor substrate.
Noise in such image sensors may also decrease the efficiency and effectiveness of the image acquisitions. The signal processing techniques that are used to overcome these noise features may themselves produce undesirable side effects, including additional hardware overhead on the chip, as well as temporal sampling requirements.
The present disclosure describes a system of using mechanical movement of an image sensor relative to the scene to find information about the scene in further detail than has been previously provided.
In an embodiment, an image sensor system is described which uses vibration of the image sensor to determine information about an image scene. The information from the vibrating image sensor is used to form pulses at time intervals that depend on the movement of the image sensor. Different embodiments are disclosed of different ways to move the image that is acquired on the image sensor, including circular, elliptical, and random movements.